Tag: Texas Rangers

It’s no secret that I love going to baseball games. Since 2011, I’ve attended over 100 Major League games in 5 different ballparks and seen 26 of the 30 MLB teams (the Cubs, Dodgers, Nationals, and Phillies just don’t make it to Texas enough). Baseball can often serve as a metaphor for life, and it can be a place to bring all sorts of people together. When I go to a game, I am regularly surrounded by people who are different from me, but we are united by the love of the game. For three hours, our differences are set aside (unless the Yankees are in town), and we find joy in watching the American pastime.

Gerald F. Seib: With the All-Star Game at Nationals Park, this is a good time to pause and reflect on the role of baseball in D.C. https://t.co/8HYXD3cnPJ

Today’s print edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a story about the role of baseball to bridge the political divide in Washington, D.C. The Washington Nationals are hosting this week’s All-Star Game festivities, and the team provides an interesting outlet for political leaders on both sides of the aisle to come together in unity. Here are a few interesting excerpts:

Each spring, conservative columnist George Will hosts a large, convivial party at his house to mark the launch of another season for the local Major League Baseball team, the Washington Nationals.

In this year of exceptional divisiveness in Washington, it turns out his gathering provided one of the capital’s rare moments of bipartisan comity. “I think our preseason party is one of the few places you will see Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi socializing,” says Mr. Will.

If you watch the news, McConnell and Pelosi are sworn enemies working towards each other’s destruction. But for a couple hours, they can socialize cordially around baseball.

Here’s another good story from the article:

Amid the capital’s tensions, who can you find at Nationals Park in Southeast Washington? “Who haven’t I seen?” replies Tom Davis, a former Virginian congressman and Nationals Park regular.

He recalls a recent game when, sitting in his usual seats down the first-base line, a foul ball came his way. He was lucky enough to grab it—at which point another fan sitting just behind him tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out that a youngster nearby had been scrambling for the same ball. “Tom, give him the ball,” said Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, the Democrat. The Republican, Mr. Davis, promptly complied.

George Will even notes that baseball is the right sport for democracy:

In recent years, the Nationals’ bipartisan fan base could unite around success. The Nats have the second-best record in baseball over the last six years, and they won the National League East title in four of those years. This year, angst and anxiety are the forces bonding fans. The team’s record entering the All Star break is an even .500, and its star hitter, Bryce Harper, scrapes along with a batting average of .214.

Even such suffering may be oddly beneficial for loyalists who, in their day jobs, toil with similar frustration at the game of governance. “I always thought baseball was the right sport for democracy because there is so much losing,” says Mr. Will. “Democracy is the system of the half loaf. Nobody gets all they want. The same is true in baseball…It’s good for the soul of democracy.”

I think there’s a lot of truth in what these stories illustrate. People from all perspectives can unite around a simple game of throwing, catching, and hitting. I’ve had countless conversations with James and Jackie, the couple who sits next to us in our regular seats at Globe Life Park to watch the Rangers. Our paths would never have crossed otherwise. In some respects, they are still strangers. In other ways, they are old friends. What I can tell you is that we bond over baseball and then go our separate ways. When we meet again at another game, we pick up where we left off.

We live in a deeply divided society, but we need something to unite us on occasion. Baseball can’t fix everything, but it can help us slow down, relax, and talk things out. Perhaps we should take to heart the words of the column:

The need for such a refuge has only grown in a summer of raw emotions over immigration, Supreme Court vacancies and Russian election meddling. So, as baseball’s mid-summer classic, the All-Star Game, takes place in Washington on Tuesday, this is a good time to pause and reflect on the role—perhaps small, yet undeniable—that baseball and the Nationals play in bridging the increasingly stark divides in Washington.

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This post originally appeared at Theological Matters on May 2. You can read the full post here.

Last month, I took my 10-year-old daughter to a baseball game. It was just the two of us. Our other three children were home with my wife. For nearly four hours, we spent time together in the car and at the stadium. My phone mostly stayed in my pocket (except for taking and posting a few photos), and we talked.

Over the course of the game, we talked about the rules of baseball; I showed her how to tell if the umpire was calling a ball or strike; we even met the people sitting next to us and talked about their experiences watching baseball. My daughter got randomly selected to receive a game-used baseball during the game because she was wearing her Texas Rangers shirt and hat. Clearly, it was a wonderful evening at the ballpark.

The value of that time at the game was priceless. Had it not been for a letter that my 12-year-old daughter penned to my own mother, this opportunity would likely never have manifested itself. Back in November, as the kids were making out their own Christmas wish lists, my oldest daughter put a letter in the mail asking my parents to buy me season tickets to the Texas Rangers for Christmas.

Her motives were pure. She knew how much I loved watching the Rangers play baseball on television. We went to a few games last season and loved every minute. The final reason that tugged at our heartstrings was when she said that she missed being able to go with me to a game—just the two of us—and spend time together. Although my wife and I intercepted the letter before it ever made it to my parents’ house, the letter still had an impact. Last week, I started the summer-long goal of taking each of my four children to at least one baseball game by ourselves.

My second daughter was overjoyed about the opportunity to go first. She has a memory of getting a ball at the game that will never fade from her mind. I even stopped on the way home at 10 p.m. to get ice cream—something only a dad would do. But most of all, we simply spent time together.

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*My recent post at Theological Matters addresses the issue of sports, reputation, and children. The full post is available here.

From halfway around the world, I got a message from my wife—“Have you seen the replays of Odor punching Bautista?” We are baseball fans in my family, and we religiously follow the Texas Rangers. My wife kept me updated while I was on a recent trip to the republic of Georgia.

Rougned Odor is the up-and-coming, fiery second baseman for the Rangers. Jose Bautista is the perennial all-star outfielder for the Toronto Blue Jays. After a series of bat flips, hard slides, and trash talking stretching back to last season, the bad blood came to its zenith with Odor’s hard right hook to the jaw of Bautista. The replays of the fight between these two players blew up the feeds on my social media page, and it has been the talk of Major League Baseball for days.

In a moment of confession, I have to admit that I felt a little satisfaction after watching the replay for the first time. It was retribution for Bautista’s home run that effectively ended the season for the Rangers last year. But then I started thinking about my son. What would I think if he landed a right hook to the jaw of an opposing player? What if he taunted the pitcher after hitting a ball over the fence?

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This classic Peanuts comic strip is evidence that baseball and theology are a match made in heaven. Thank you, Charles Schulz.

It also serves as an appropriate commentary on the Texas Rangers’ abysmal 2014 season. We can only hope for better next year. But in the words of former Rangers manager Ron Washington: “That’s the way baseball go.”

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The 2013 edition of the Official Baseball Rules produced by Major League Baseball defines a wild pitch as “one so high, so low, or so wide of the plate that it cannot be handled with ordinary effort by the catcher.”

Robbie Ross, a left-handed relief pitcher for the Texas Rangers and outspoken Christian on the team, threw a wild pitch the other day, but not from the mound at Rangers Ballpark. Ross’ pitch came on behalf of the NOH8 campaign. An article on the sports news site SB Nation suggested the idea that Ross’ involvement was wide of orthodox Christianity as it reported, “While it may seem an oxymoron to some for two devout Christians to showcase their religion on a campaign in support of gay equality, it made perfect sense to the Rosses.”

NOH8 is “a charitable organization whose mission is to promote marriage, gender and human equality through education, advocacy, social media, and visual protest.” The campaign uses photography to promote its message, often showing supporters with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize stopping negative speech toward homosexuality.

Ross and his wife, Brittany, were recently featured in a photo shoot for NOH8. In a subsequent interview, Ross proclaimed that he wanted to display his Christianity as part of the message. He said:

Being in sports, and being around all kinds of different people, you just want to accept everyone for who they are. My wife Brittany and I are Christians, and we believe we as Christians should love everyone and show everyone love, and if this is the best way to do it, then we want to support them.

As with many Christians who try to find biblical support for homosexuality, Ross and his wife have elevated the concept of love above God’s specific statements regarding sin. For them, love means inclusion, acceptance, and approval of all lifestyles even if they are labeled as sin in Scripture. In response to a question about biblical passages that label homosexuality a sin, Brittany Ross stated:

I just don’t think it matters if it’s a sin. We all sin, we all know that, so if we just stop focusing on sin, we can start loving each other.

The article reports that Robbie “quickly jumped in” and said:

If you went Biblically off of everything we’re doing now, during our every day, I’m sure there are one or two sins throughout our day we don’t even realize we’re committing.

There it is. In the minds of the Rosses, sin no longer matters—only love and acceptance.

As a fan of the Rangers, I really like Robbie Ross. I had been impressed by his boldness to let others know about his faith. In baseball, all pitchers miss the plate on a regular basis. It’s called a ball. However, the best pitchers don’t throw wild pitches. On this issue, Robbie Ross has more than missed the plate—he has thrown so wild that his pitch can’t be handled with ordinary effort by orthodox Christianity. This pitch requires leaving the accepted doctrines and interpretations of Scripture. It promotes the homosexual agenda in such a way that minimizes the teaching of Scripture. In baseball terms, this pitch was wild and went to the backstop, advancing a runner along the way.

After Paul discusses homosexuality in Romans 1:26–27, he continues to talk about the depravity of mankind for the rest of the chapter. He notes a number of sins that represent a depraved mind. Finally, he makes a piercing statement about those who condone such sinful behavior. In Romans 1:32, Paul writes:

And although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Paul tells us that sin deserves God’s punishment. Thankfully, God has provided the way of salvation through the death, burial, and resurrection of his Son. However, Christians who deny the need for repentance and salvation are like those Paul condemned in Romans 1:32. In spite of knowing what God commands, they give hearty approval to those who live in sin.

I pray that the Rosses would go back to their “pitching coach” and work on their delivery again so they can avoid throwing any more wild pitches.

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It’s not a shock to anyone who knows me that I am a Texas Rangers fan. However, this post is a little off the beaten path for me.

I noticed for the first time during last season’s MLB playoffs that I could not log in to Twitter or Facebook during the Rangers game. I blamed it on my 3 year old iPhone. Well now I know the real answer with data to back it up.

CNN Money posted an article about why you can’t get wireless service at sports games. With help from app maker SwayMarkets, we now have research showing the best and worst times to access your cellular data service during a Major League Baseball game.

Here’s some research from the article:

The company’s founders went to Fenway Park on May 31 to catch a Red Sox-Tigers baseball game, armed with iPhones on three different wireless phone networks: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Using SwayMarkets’ CarrierCompare software, they constantly pinged the various providers’ networks to measure their speed and response times.

The results were revealing. And very, very bad.

Sprint (S, Fortune 500) and especially Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500) became so overwhelmed that their wireless networks were practically unusable throughout most of the game. Verizon actually had several network failures during the game, meaning download requests simply weren’t able to go through.

AT&T’s (T, Fortune 500) network was the only one that worked from start to finish, but its performance was still dreadful. Download speeds during the baseball game dropped to a third of what they were just minutes before and after the game. Refreshing Twitter or Facebook, which took about 6 seconds before the game’s start, took more than 20 seconds at the worst points and sometimes failed outright.

The most interesting information in the article relates to the times that service became the most dreadful. Since the researchers went to a Red Sox-Tigers game at Fenway Park, much of it had to do with how well the Red Sox were playing.

Network performance on all three carriers fell through the floor as people filed into their seats just before the 7:10 p.m. start time. They were texting, calling, uploading photos to social networks — everything you’d expect people to do when there’s not much going on.

Then, as people got into the game, they used their phones less and service got progressively better. The Red Sox quickly took the lead in the second, and lost it in the third. (That’s not surprising if you’ve been following the Sox this year).

In the bottom of the third inning, just after the Red Sox tied it up again, Tigers catcher Alex Avila took a foul tip off his facemask, knocking him out of the game.

During the extended injury timeout, people flocked to their phones, and service slowed to a crawl. The speeds on AT&T’s network plummeted to less than half its gametime average. Verizon and Sprint’s networks virtually crashed, with speeds sometimes falling below 100 kilobits per second. If you’re older than 25, think about dial-up modem speeds. That’ll give you an idea of how slow the wireless networks were.

As play resumed, network quality quickly bounced back from “dreadful” to “poor.”

But when the seventh inning stretch hit, people went right back to their phones, and wireless service quality plunged. A pitching change one batter into the bottom of the seventh led to another short bout of degraded service.

Detroit scored another run in the top of the eighth, gaining a two-run edge over the Sox, and many of the Fenway faithful started to lose hope. As they filed out, service dramatically improved.

After the Tigers scored another two runs in the top of the ninth inning, taking a 7-3 lead and thoroughly dispiriting the remaining fans, service almost returned to normal.

Tonight I’ll be spending a few hours with 45,000 of my closest friends at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a tweet or text out a time or two, but it might be touch and go, especially if Josh Hamilton crushes his 27th homer into the upper homerun porch. Since Rangers fans are more loyal than BoSox fans, we won’t leave the stands early no matter what the score. However, I fully expect to see the Rangers win, and I’ll tweet once I am safely back at the house.

Go Rangers!

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News broke this week that Josh Hamilton, the all-star outfielder for the Texas Rangers, had a “weak moment” on Monday night and consumed alcohol. In the world of professional sports, alcohol consumption is a foregone conclusion among both fans and athletes. However, Josh Hamilton’s story is different. After spending three years out of Major League Baseball for drug and alcohol abuse, Hamilton has publicly committed to avoiding alcohol. He readily acknowledges that he does things he regrets when under the influence of alcohol.

I am a huge Rangers fan. Hamilton is among my favorite players. My heart beats a little faster when Josh steps to the plate because I know he can change the face of the game with one swing of the bat. I’ll never forget watching his stellar performance in the 2008 Home Run Derby. His performance will most likely never be matched. He is one of the most talented players in baseball—and he plays for my team.

So what should we do when our heroes fail? What do we tell our kids who see their favorite player on the news? How do we respond when life throws this curveball?

First, we need to recognize that none of us are perfect. Scripture declares that we are all sinners (Rom 3:23). Despite our best efforts, we have no righteousness of our own (Rom 3:10–12). The difference between Hamilton and us is that our failures probably won’t make headlines. No one is watching our every move in order to report our faults on the local news. However, our sins—no matter how great or small—carry the same eternal consequences from God. We deserve death and hell for our sins whether or not we are anyone’s hero.

Second, we can rejoice that we can seek the forgiveness of God and those we have hurt just like Josh did. For over ten minutes in his press conference, Hamilton told what happened. He admitted his sin. He admitted his deception to his teammate. He admitted that he had hurt others. He admitted that he had let his fans down. He confessed that he needed forgiveness. He called upon God to help him. Josh took the biblical route on this one. He confessed his sin (James 5:16) and has set out again to change his behavior with God’s help (i.e., repentance). When we fail, we need to take the same path to repentance.

Finally, we need to remember that men will always fail us. We must place our trust in God rather than men. Josh Hamilton has all the attributes we want to see in a sports hero when life is going well. Many people point to his faith in Christ as an example of how someone in the public eye can live a life of faith. However, that makes his failures hurt that much more for fellow believers. The world is watching for believers to trip up, and Josh’s faults become fodder for those who desire to deride Christianity. No matter how strong that hero appears to be, we can never put our trust in him to carry the banner of our faith. Psalm 118:8–9 admonishes us, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.”

On opening day in April, I hope to be at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington cheering my favorite baseball team to victory. When Josh Hamilton steps to the plate, I will cheer for him to succeed. He is one of my heroes—I wish I could run, throw, and hit like him. However, he is not the object of my faith. He is a flawed human being just like me. I put my faith in Christ. I walk beside a fellow believer like Josh knowing that I have faults too, just not as public.